Torrent Trackers Ban Windows 10 Over Privacy Concerns

Megalith

Megalith

24-bit/48kHz
Staff member
Joined
Aug 20, 2006
Messages
13,000
There are those who think Windows 10’s data collection is nothing to fuss about, while others believe there is an extraordinary amount of information being captured by Microsoft for vile purposes. It seems that torrent trackers are falling into the latter party, as some are banning the OS entirely.

…the recent privacy concerns have some torrent tracker staffers worried. During the week TF received reports informing us that several private trackers have banned Windows 10, or are considering doing so. The staffers at iTS explain that Windows 10 is off-limits now because of the extensive amount of data it shares. This includes connections to MarkMonitor, the brand protection company which is also involved in the U.S. Copyright Alert System.
 
Ironically these guys are in a way doing a lot of people a favor by cutting off a major malware vector. In any case this is why God invented VMs, spoofing tools, etc. Exposing the native OS and info to torrent traffic is stupid anyway. Talk about data loss and privacy issues.
 
heatlesssun said:
Ironically these guys are in a way doing a lot of people a favor by cutting off a major malware vector. In any case this is why God invented VMs, spoofing tools, etc. Exposing the native OS and info to torrent traffic is stupid anyway. Talk about data loss and privacy issues.
Click to expand...

VMs are not a panacea. There's a belief among many that what goes on in your VM can't affect the host; that's demonstrably incorrect. Hypervisor breakout exploits are a fairly hot topic and a serious concern.
 
I'm going to say this, think about it for just 1 second... why would Microsoft want to hand that information on so that its gives the company a bad name of not to be trusted, which in turn stops you from buying their product, which in turn losses them money?

Doesn't make sense right..... because they wont.... you do know they could have done this with a patch to any previous OS right?
 
If torrent clients can excessively leak info from W10, it cant be hard for other programs to do the same.
Unsafe is best left well alone.
I'm staying with Windows 7 because 10 offers nothing better yet.
More reasons why its the better choice keep appearing!
 
heatlesssun said:
Ironically these guys are in a way doing a lot of people a favor by cutting off a major malware vector. In any case this is why God invented VMs, spoofing tools, etc. Exposing the native OS and info to torrent traffic is stupid anyway. Talk about data loss and privacy issues.
Click to expand...

Just the man I wanted to talk to...

More than once when me and others have made gripes about Microsoft data collection in Win10 you claimed the masses have spoken and are willing to exchange their data for freebies.

You and others have claimed we are a small minority that cares about privacy and are not important enough for Microsoft to give a shit. Well, put this in your pipe and smoke it because according to pew research you are wrong.

http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/05/20/americans-attitudes-about-privacy-security-and-surveillance/

Survey results from early 2015 show:

93% of adults say that being in control of who can get information about them is important; 74% feel this is “very important,” while 19% say it is “somewhat important.”

90% say that controlling what information is collected about them is important—65% think it is “very important” and 25% say it is “somewhat important.”

Americans have little confidence that their data will remain private and secure.




Next time don't pull your stats from your ass! :p
 
Anybody have some technical information with this, ie the actually address or addresses that windows 10 machines are talking to, I'm behind a meraki device, and see all of my traffic, while I have 22 different *.microsoft.com destinations :rolleyes:, I have nothing that I immediately recognize as MarkMonitor.

TorrentFreak articles have no real information, and neither did the reddit thread... I will happily blackhole some unwanted traffic.

Atleast in the last month.
 
Freebo said:
I'm going to say this, think about it for just 1 second... why would Microsoft want to hand that information on so that its gives the company a bad name of not to be trusted, which in turn stops you from buying their product, which in turn losses them money?

Doesn't make sense right..... because they wont.... you do know they could have done this with a patch to any previous OS right?
Click to expand...
Nah brah win10 can't be adopted by hipaa or sox compliant orgs. Follow the money.

/s
 
People can yell and scream and complain about how much they want privacy and control over their data, but if they really cared about it companies like facebook and google would not exist since this is how they make their money.

I can scream at the top of my lungs my information is my information but the moment I do a google search or view a website while face book tracking cookies are active I become a hypocrite as I just willingly handed over the information.
 
The head-in-the-sand mentality about this subject will eventually go full circle with people realizing what leaking all this information will eventually do to them or their next of kin.

It's going to be interesting later, not fun though.
 
LordCalin said:
I can scream at the top of my lungs my information is my information but the moment I do a google search or view a website while face book tracking cookies are active I become a hypocrite as I just willingly handed over the information.
Click to expand...

The difference being using google for search is a choice and not mandatory. You can just as easily use IXquick or duckduckgo for search which collect no data. If I want to be able to play all my PC games I must use Windows and have no choice. Just how Microsoft wants it too.
 
I said "if" I want to be able to play my games.

"If I want to be able to play all my PC games I must use Windows and have no choice"
 
Yikes. Windows 10 is starting to look worse than I initially thought. I'm now considering uninstalling it but I'd hate to lose DX12 support. I might just stick to my plan and just use mint for desktop use and windows solely for games. I'd rather just pay for Win10 and NOT have the telemetry garbage but now there is unfortunately no choice.
 
What did people expect? It was given AWAY. Never ever trust anything "free" from a corporation.
 
rezerekted said:
Just the man I wanted to talk to...

More than once when me and others have made gripes about Microsoft data collection in Win10 you claimed the masses have spoken and are willing to exchange their data for freebies.

You and others have claimed we are a small minority that cares about privacy and are not important enough for Microsoft to give a shit. Well, put this in your pipe and smoke it because according to pew research you are wrong.

http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/05/20/americans-attitudes-about-privacy-security-and-surveillance/

Survey results from early 2015 show:

93% of adults say that being in control of who can get information about them is important; 74% feel this is “very important,” while 19% say it is “somewhat important.”

90% say that controlling what information is collected about them is important—65% think it is “very important” and 25% say it is “somewhat important.”

Americans have little confidence that their data will remain private and secure.




Next time don't pull your stats from your ass! :p
Click to expand...

Very good post.
Thanks for sharing!

The big thing about Windows this time around, is that, unlike 8, it isn't a complete POS, but that the privacy concerns are through the roof.
We can thank the new CEO of Microsoft for this.

Really sad, as I was actually looking forward to Windows 10, but the performance boosts do not outweigh the privacy and massive data sharing concerns, not counting the forced cloud nonsense.
 
bboynitrous said:
Yikes. Windows 10 is starting to look worse than I initially thought. I'm now considering uninstalling it but I'd hate to lose DX12 support. I might just stick to my plan and just use mint for desktop use and windows solely for games.
Click to expand...

That is exactly what I do.
 
Red Falcon said:
Very good post.
Thanks for sharing!

The big thing about Windows this time around, is that, unlike 8, it isn't a complete POS, but that the privacy concerns are through the roof.
We can thank the new CEO of Microsoft for this.

Really sad, as I was actually looking forward to Windows 10, but the performance boosts do not outweigh the privacy and massive data sharing concerns, not counting the forced cloud nonsense.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure how you conclude its not as bad. It certainly isnt as bad as 8. But its actually worse then 8.1 in the realm of touch (which is where they were claiming they wanted to go). They keep robbing Peter to pay Paul. And never adding anything to, only taking away from, its core user base (the desktop). Lost functionality, mish-mash of a UI, less UI customization, the list goes on. All hidden wonderfully under a slightly different UI change (which, as mentioned, always seems to have less user combustibility and feature depth).

Thre is really no big additions to 10 that wasn't already achievable in 8.1 (and probably even in 8). And possibly even 7 if you take away the faster UEFI booting and pretty (but rather useless) "Copy Dialog" box and Task Manager UI changes (that still lack basic information and for the latter, reset its customization when open and the PC crashes).

Just because the bar was lowered way, WAY down with 8.x, doesn't mean you can claim such upgrades of grandure for what i experienced as as complete let down through all my pre-release testing through to "final" 10240.
 
Why would they want to know what Linux distro you download?
 
crusty_juggler said:
What percentage of those adults have Facebook accounts and use Google products?
Click to expand...

I was thinking the same thing, as most of these people probably also have no idea what sort of data is already collected on them, and have no idea what real privacy means.
 
So what I'm getting from this article is that MS is potentially handing info to a "for-profit lawsuits" outlet?
 
rezerekted said:
Just the man I wanted to talk to...

More than once when me and others have made gripes about Microsoft data collection in Win10 you claimed the masses have spoken and are willing to exchange their data for freebies.

You and others have claimed we are a small minority that cares about privacy and are not important enough for Microsoft to give a shit. Well, put this in your pipe and smoke it because according to pew research you are wrong.

http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/05/20/americans-attitudes-about-privacy-security-and-surveillance/

Survey results from early 2015 show:

93% of adults say that being in control of who can get information about them is important; 74% feel this is “very important,” while 19% say it is “somewhat important.”

90% say that controlling what information is collected about them is important—65% think it is “very important” and 25% say it is “somewhat important.”

Americans have little confidence that their data will remain private and secure.




Next time don't pull your stats from your ass! :p
Click to expand...

Thanks for demonstrating the gap between what people claim to want and what they actually do. Android and iOS have similar privacy polices and look at the market share: http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-os-market-share.jsp

Perhaps the issue is lack of understanding, but you can't really quote census data unless you're just talking about what people say they want, not what they actually do about it. There is a pretty serious gulf between people's claimed wants for IT security and their actions surrounding IT security. Maybe a major public information campaign is needed.
 
I think the general issue here is that most people in the US, anyway, have fallen so far behind the curve on income equality that they are pretty willing to make non-financial transactions in return for goods and services that otherwise would cost a fair bit of coin to provide. What Google, MS, Apple, et al have been discovering (and what Google really pioneered) is that we are (most of us) too poor to really enjoy all of the things they could provide us, so they are looking to wring value out of their market in ways other than direct purchases. Right now most of them figure the big money is in big data, so they are snarfing up all our little tidbits in the hope that they can translate that to marketing revenue etc.

Basically, people value their privacy, but in the end they want the goods and services provided by losing their privacy more, and especially because that is increasingly the only way to get said goods and services. Maybe if you taught linux and better economics in public schools you could overcome that kind of cycle, but that's not going to happen under the current all-consuming focus on Common Core (Math, Reading, and Science Uber Alles).

Also - hi everyone!
 
TheEschaton said:
I think the general issue here is that most people in the US, anyway, have fallen so far behind the curve on income equality that they are pretty willing to make non-financial transactions in return for goods and services that otherwise would cost a fair bit of coin to provide. What Google, MS, Apple, et al have been discovering (and what Google really pioneered) is that we are (most of us) too poor to really enjoy all of the things they could provide us, so they are looking to wring value out of their market in ways other than direct purchases. Right now most of them figure the big money is in big data, so they are snarfing up all our little tidbits in the hope that they can translate that to marketing revenue etc.

Basically, people value their privacy, but in the end they want the goods and services provided by losing their privacy more, and especially because that is increasingly the only way to get said goods and services. Maybe if you taught linux and better economics in public schools you could overcome that kind of cycle, but that's not going to happen under the current all-consuming focus on Common Core (Math, Reading, and Science Uber Alles).

Also - hi everyone!
Click to expand...

I'm shocked, SHOCKED!!! you didn't use micro-aggression or some form of SJW parlance in your writing.
 
TheEschaton said:
I think the general issue here is that most people in the US, anyway, have fallen so far behind the curve on income equality that they are pretty willing to make non-financial transactions in return for goods and services that otherwise would cost a fair bit of coin to provide. What Google, MS, Apple, et al have been discovering (and what Google really pioneered) is that we are (most of us) too poor to really enjoy all of the things they could provide us, so they are looking to wring value out of their market in ways other than direct purchases. Right now most of them figure the big money is in big data, so they are snarfing up all our little tidbits in the hope that they can translate that to marketing revenue etc.

Basically, people value their privacy, but in the end they want the goods and services provided by losing their privacy more, and especially because that is increasingly the only way to get said goods and services. Maybe if you taught linux and better economics in public schools you could overcome that kind of cycle, but that's not going to happen under the current all-consuming focus on Common Core (Math, Reading, and Science Uber Alles).

Also - hi everyone!
Click to expand...

Who is going to pay for YouTube or news or web searches or Facebook? And I thought the whole beauty of Linux is that it's free. Historically that's been on the top arguments made in its favor and the whole FOSS platform.
 
It used to be a person owned a PC and with a mostly discrete operating system. Now MS, Google et al want to co-own your stuff and let you be a cultivated bacterium in their petri dish - a farmhand on their data plantation. People fell too hard for the bells and whistles on their phones. I've learned to take off all the apps. Ended all communication, location stuff I know of. Stopped using everything Google (even search since a comparison with Duck search showed me how much Google is censoring certain politicized topics). Guess I'll have to go with a distro. I've played withn them in the past figuring they would be a good move some day
 
Quix said:
There is a pretty serious gulf between people's claimed wants for IT security and their actions surrounding IT security. Maybe a major public information campaign is needed.
Click to expand...

But the corporations don't care what people want anyway. They never asked us if we are ok with this, they just do as they please.
 
Freebo said:
I'm going to say this, think about it for just 1 second... why would Microsoft want to hand that information on so that its gives the company a bad name of not to be trusted, which in turn stops you from buying their product, which in turn losses them money?

Doesn't make sense right..... because they wont.... you do know they could have done this with a patch to any previous OS right?
Click to expand...
...because it doesn't lose them any money? People will sacrifice their privacy for free. Gmail, Google, etc...

Also, this particular concern has to deal with people using torrent sites - people who are probably going to pirate the OS anyway!
 
In fact Microsoft should have done this earlier. Everybody is already, why shouldn't they?

They don't, go out of business and people would be here laughing their asses off their inability to compete.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top